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If you don't have the ability to control your premises, or employ enough security, perhaps you should not be permitted to operate those premises. Unsafe clubs g

If you don't have the ability to control your premises, or employ enough security, perhaps you should not be permitted to operate those premises. Unsafe clubs get closed down. They - or any other social media company - don't have a right to exist. If societies around the world conclude they do more harm than good as they currently operate, it's perfectly reasonable to require them to moderate adequately. If they cannot they can close, or withdraw from that region, and someone else may wish to try. Facebook could employ thousands more to moderate and supervise - without destroying their ability to make profit. Pretending the problems don't exist, as all the platforms have done so far, looks like it's not going to be tenable for much longer. Not only am I fine with that, I think it long overdue.

o10449366 8y ago
Well as much as HN or the news media would like you to believe, societies around the world have definitely not concluded that FB does more harm than good and I don't see that changing anytime soon. You may think the club is unsafe, but a billion people are still attending all night and they feel perfectly comfortable.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Attendance proves nothing at all. We've no idea if they are comfortable or not. Many appear to have come to think of it as a necessary evil. Millions of people were eating adulterated food every meal prior to food regulations. Political process and advertising was rife with corruption prior to attempts to instil a semblance of fairness limiting what was allowed and when. Yet people attempted to vote before this.
  - o10449366 8y ago
    You're claiming simultaneously that we have no idea whether these users are comfortable or not and that most of them think of it as a necessary evil. Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. You can't make a comparison between social media and food because one is necessary for survival and one isn't (I'm sure I'm going to invite a ton of comments here on how 'Facebook has become so ubiquitous and powerful it's now synonymous with survival!') If the negatives really outweighed the positives people would be leaving Facebook by the droves. It's only on HN and in the news media that this narrative is being spun.
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      OK, definitely can't take you seriously now. I am claiming your statement "and they feel perfectly comfortable" is unknown. Further that it is highly unlikely. Many is not most - it probably is most of my friends and relatives, but they are representative of nothing at all. Yet there is now a certain discomfort in almost all discussions of Facebook - no matter where that takes place - that simply was not there 5 or so years ago.
    - Barrin92 8y ago
      >Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. Yes, it proves that network effects can force people into bad equilibra. If you think high university costs are harmful for society in the long run, but if you personally don't attend you will incur significant cost in the short run, with nobody cooperating, how do you behave?
    - zimpenfish 8y ago
      > Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. Not really - I would love to be able to delete my account from Facebook but it's the only place some people that I want to keep in touch with will use. (I did the next best thing - deleted the apps and only check the website infrequently.)
    - pjc50 8y ago
      It doesn't actually matter whether people are "comfortable" on Facebook or not, it matters whether they're being incited to murder people. Facebook has an effect outside its users. The Bhopal of racism.
- kylecazar 8y ago
  Exactly. Generally speaking, the onus is on the userbase to react to perceived (or real) immorality by refraining from using Facebook. However, it remains the office of government to introduce enforceable regulation in this (or any) space to protect their constituents, and hold those in violation accountable. I don't suspect it's an easy task, as the problems are broad and can be a grey area. I.e, some of the problems with Facebook stem from mischievous users -- exactly how accountable the platform is for their behavior isn't universally agreed upon. I think if rules of engagement happen, people will have less problems with just letting the market decide.
- dylan604 8y ago
  What's the internet version of the fire marshall? If the people that feel the club is unsafe, a simple call to the authorities will have the marshall come out and declare it unsafe and shut it down. Can we get Fire Marshall Bill to do it?
- pjc50 8y ago
  The presence of a lot of people doesn't tell you whether it's safe, only how many people are at risk if a fire does start. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire
xupybd 8y ago
So why not fault the ISPs for allowing this?
- Nextgrid 8y ago
  If you host a hateful or illegal website and someone complains to your ISP they’ll cut you off immediately. No reason Shitbook shouldn’t be held to the same standard.
  - xupybd 8y ago
    They do the same thing. They worked all night to prevent the video from propagating. What they are calling for here is preventing it from being published. So this would require your ISP to prevent the content before people complain.
WillPostForFood 8y ago
If you don't have the ability to control your premises, or employ enough security, perhaps you should not be permitted to operate those premises. So we should shut down the mosques in New Zealand because they didn't control their premises and keep the shooter out? Should we shut down banks because they didn't have enough security to keep a bank robber out? You are shifting the blame away from the perpetrator. Every crime ever could be blamed on the victim for lack of security.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Let's take it to the absurd. I am NOT shifting any blame from the perpetrator. I am placing additional blame on a medium that isn't willing to exercise adequate restraint or control. A bank undoubtedly has security measures in place to prevent robbery, if they don't bother, they won't last long. Nonetheless, there are regulations on what may and may not be done for public spaces, how crowded they may be to pass fire regulation and so forth. Neither a mosque nor bank should be closed for a circumstance that could not reasonably have been predicted.
  - RandomTisk 8y ago
    Why stop at Facebook? The GoPro or iPhone he used should have caught it before it even reached facebook. The ISP should have caught it too. Lock them all up? How about the pavement the killer walked on, it should have swallowed him, let's sue the city for not designing shooter eating sidewalks? You're looking to go down a ridiculous road imo.
    - ben_w 8y ago
      Which of those examples already have copyright infringement detection filters built in which should have been capable of preventing, e.g. re-uploading of the original livestream? Do any of them boast about their natural language processing and engage in psychological experiments on their users to detect, e.g. suicidal tendencies?
  - o10449366 8y ago
antpls 8y ago
> The question then becomes who decides what's acceptable content, the only answer is regulations and legislation for this otherwise for-profit tech giants will be the ones who decide and they're more concerned with user-engagement than far reaching detached societal implications. What about this : all content is potential knowledge and should be made available. That way no one get to decide what is "acceptable content". At the end of the day, the laws still forbid anyone to kill people, content or not. A good read is : https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018...
smallgovt 8y ago
>> Facebook could employ thousands more to moderate and supervise - without destroying their ability to make profit You're underestimating the scale of this problem. Facebook users create billions of new posts a day. And, tens of millions of these posts get reported for moderation per day. "Thousands of more" employees isn't going to solve the problem. Assuming each posts takes 10 minutes of labor to review, you would need an army of 200K individuals, and this amount of labor would cost many billions of dollars per year. >> Pretending the problems don't exist, as all the platforms have done so far You must be joking. Facebook has already made massive investments into moderation. It's their top priority for 2019. In many ways, they are doing the opposite of pretending this problem doesn't exist. >> They - or any other social media company - don't have a right to exist. Nobody is arguing that FB has an inherent right to exist. The only point GP made was that (as made evident by your comment) many people are underestimating the associated costs with manual moderation of content.
- ben_w 8y ago
  > "Thousands of more" employees isn't going to solve the problem. Assuming each posts takes 10 minutes of labor to review, you would need an army of 200K individuals, and this amount of labor would cost many billions of dollars per year. Agreed. Let’s require them to do that.
  - javagram 8y ago
    Should all online platforms be required to do that? I can post here on HN right now and no moderator is pre-approving my content. I could go find the shooter’s illegal manifesto and post it here, I might be banned after some period of time but just like on Facebook it would have had time for other people to see it. Applied consistently this standard would kill most online forums and that type of thing.
    - ben_w 8y ago
      It’s a matter of scale. Even before they became larger than the largest single nation on Earth, Facebook used to get in the news for stories like “1000 people show up to birthday party after teen accidentally forgets privacy settings”. Hacker News can #ahem# slashdot servers it links to, so it’s not exactly small, but it’s still peanuts compared to Facebook. Just as software engineering practices need to change for the big names compared to everyone else, so do social practices.

o10449366 8y ago

Well as much as HN or the news media would like you to believe, societies around the world have definitely not concluded that FB does more harm than good and I don't see that changing anytime soon. You may think the club is unsafe, but a billion people are still attending all night and they feel perfectly comfortable.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Attendance proves nothing at all. We've no idea if they are comfortable or not. Many appear to have come to think of it as a necessary evil. Millions of people were eating adulterated food every meal prior to food regulations. Political process and advertising was rife with corruption prior to attempts to instil a semblance of fairness limiting what was allowed and when. Yet people attempted to vote before this.
- o10449366 8y ago
  You're claiming simultaneously that we have no idea whether these users are comfortable or not and that most of them think of it as a necessary evil. Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. You can't make a comparison between social media and food because one is necessary for survival and one isn't (I'm sure I'm going to invite a ton of comments here on how 'Facebook has become so ubiquitous and powerful it's now synonymous with survival!') If the negatives really outweighed the positives people would be leaving Facebook by the droves. It's only on HN and in the news media that this narrative is being spun.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    OK, definitely can't take you seriously now. I am claiming your statement "and they feel perfectly comfortable" is unknown. Further that it is highly unlikely. Many is not most - it probably is most of my friends and relatives, but they are representative of nothing at all. Yet there is now a certain discomfort in almost all discussions of Facebook - no matter where that takes place - that simply was not there 5 or so years ago.
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    >Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. Yes, it proves that network effects can force people into bad equilibra. If you think high university costs are harmful for society in the long run, but if you personally don't attend you will incur significant cost in the short run, with nobody cooperating, how do you behave?
  - zimpenfish 8y ago
    > Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. Not really - I would love to be able to delete my account from Facebook but it's the only place some people that I want to keep in touch with will use. (I did the next best thing - deleted the apps and only check the website infrequently.)
  - pjc50 8y ago
    It doesn't actually matter whether people are "comfortable" on Facebook or not, it matters whether they're being incited to murder people. Facebook has an effect outside its users. The Bhopal of racism.
kylecazar 8y ago
Exactly. Generally speaking, the onus is on the userbase to react to perceived (or real) immorality by refraining from using Facebook. However, it remains the office of government to introduce enforceable regulation in this (or any) space to protect their constituents, and hold those in violation accountable. I don't suspect it's an easy task, as the problems are broad and can be a grey area. I.e, some of the problems with Facebook stem from mischievous users -- exactly how accountable the platform is for their behavior isn't universally agreed upon. I think if rules of engagement happen, people will have less problems with just letting the market decide.
dylan604 8y ago
What's the internet version of the fire marshall? If the people that feel the club is unsafe, a simple call to the authorities will have the marshall come out and declare it unsafe and shut it down. Can we get Fire Marshall Bill to do it?
pjc50 8y ago
The presence of a lot of people doesn't tell you whether it's safe, only how many people are at risk if a fire does start. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire

xupybd 8y ago

So why not fault the ISPs for allowing this?

Nextgrid 8y ago
If you host a hateful or illegal website and someone complains to your ISP they’ll cut you off immediately. No reason Shitbook shouldn’t be held to the same standard.
- xupybd 8y ago
  They do the same thing. They worked all night to prevent the video from propagating. What they are calling for here is preventing it from being published. So this would require your ISP to prevent the content before people complain.

WillPostForFood 8y ago

If you don't have the ability to control your premises, or employ enough security, perhaps you should not be permitted to operate those premises. So we should shut down the mosques in New Zealand because they didn't control their premises and keep the shooter out? Should we shut down banks because they didn't have enough security to keep a bank robber out? You are shifting the blame away from the perpetrator. Every crime ever could be blamed on the victim for lack of security.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Let's take it to the absurd. I am NOT shifting any blame from the perpetrator. I am placing additional blame on a medium that isn't willing to exercise adequate restraint or control. A bank undoubtedly has security measures in place to prevent robbery, if they don't bother, they won't last long. Nonetheless, there are regulations on what may and may not be done for public spaces, how crowded they may be to pass fire regulation and so forth. Neither a mosque nor bank should be closed for a circumstance that could not reasonably have been predicted.
- RandomTisk 8y ago
  Why stop at Facebook? The GoPro or iPhone he used should have caught it before it even reached facebook. The ISP should have caught it too. Lock them all up? How about the pavement the killer walked on, it should have swallowed him, let's sue the city for not designing shooter eating sidewalks? You're looking to go down a ridiculous road imo.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    Which of those examples already have copyright infringement detection filters built in which should have been capable of preventing, e.g. re-uploading of the original livestream? Do any of them boast about their natural language processing and engage in psychological experiments on their users to detect, e.g. suicidal tendencies?
- o10449366 8y ago

antpls 8y ago

> The question then becomes who decides what's acceptable content, the only answer is regulations and legislation for this otherwise for-profit tech giants will be the ones who decide and they're more concerned with user-engagement than far reaching detached societal implications. What about this : all content is potential knowledge and should be made available. That way no one get to decide what is "acceptable content". At the end of the day, the laws still forbid anyone to kill people, content or not. A good read is : https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018...

smallgovt 8y ago

>> Facebook could employ thousands more to moderate and supervise - without destroying their ability to make profit You're underestimating the scale of this problem. Facebook users create billions of new posts a day. And, tens of millions of these posts get reported for moderation per day. "Thousands of more" employees isn't going to solve the problem. Assuming each posts takes 10 minutes of labor to review, you would need an army of 200K individuals, and this amount of labor would cost many billions of dollars per year. >> Pretending the problems don't exist, as all the platforms have done so far You must be joking. Facebook has already made massive investments into moderation. It's their top priority for 2019. In many ways, they are doing the opposite of pretending this problem doesn't exist. >> They - or any other social media company - don't have a right to exist. Nobody is arguing that FB has an inherent right to exist. The only point GP made was that (as made evident by your comment) many people are underestimating the associated costs with manual moderation of content.

ben_w 8y ago
> "Thousands of more" employees isn't going to solve the problem. Assuming each posts takes 10 minutes of labor to review, you would need an army of 200K individuals, and this amount of labor would cost many billions of dollars per year. Agreed. Let’s require them to do that.
- javagram 8y ago
  Should all online platforms be required to do that? I can post here on HN right now and no moderator is pre-approving my content. I could go find the shooter’s illegal manifesto and post it here, I might be banned after some period of time but just like on Facebook it would have had time for other people to see it. Applied consistently this standard would kill most online forums and that type of thing.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    It’s a matter of scale. Even before they became larger than the largest single nation on Earth, Facebook used to get in the news for stories like “1000 people show up to birthday party after teen accidentally forgets privacy settings”. Hacker News can #ahem# slashdot servers it links to, so it’s not exactly small, but it’s still peanuts compared to Facebook. Just as software engineering practices need to change for the big names compared to everyone else, so do social practices.